Page 104 of The Proving Ground
“With the name Sam and a heart on them?”
“She made them and took them apart and remade them pretty often. I still wear one she made. It says Becca.”
She raised her arm to display a bracelet. I saw one of the female jurors react to the sad reminder of what Brenda had lost.
“It didn’t mean he was her boyfriend,” Brenda continued. “They had gone to one football game together.”
“And did she post a photo of them—a selfie taken with her phone—on her social media after that game?” Mason asked.
“She might have, I don’t know. But it didn’t mean—”
“Thank you for your answer. Mrs. Randolph, I’ll ask you again, Did the detectives tell you that Aaron Colton’s jealousy over this other boy might have played a part in the motive for the shooting that took your daughter’s life?”
“No, they did not. They only mentioned the—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Randolph, you answered the question.”
Mason was clearly trying to lay the foundation for an argument that jealousy was Aaron Colton’s motive for the killing of Becca Randolph, a motive that needed no encouragement from an AI companion. I knew this would work only if Mason had more to add to it, and my guess was that the addition might be testimony from Bruce or Trisha Colton.
“I do have one last question,” Mason said. “Have you filed a lawsuit against Smith and Wesson, the company that made the gun used in the shooting of your daughter?”
There it was, one of the key arguments in the defense’s case, wrapped up in one question. The message to the jury was that if the company that made the gun was not responsible for the murder, then the company that made the AI companion was not responsible either. It was not a valid comparison, but the Masons were not worried about that.
But we had anticipated the question would come in some form or another. Brenda was ready with an answer.
“Not yet,” she said.
Mason left it there, telling the judge he was finished with Brenda. It had been a skillful cross by the Mason I thought of as the lesser of the two brothers. With just a few questions he had raised the possibility of an alternate motive for the murder of Rebecca Randolph. It would now be up to me to bury that motive with evidence to the contrary.
38
DURING THE LUNCHbreak, I ate with Cisco and Lorna at Phillippe’s and we took one of the tables in the back room. We all got the French dip roast beef sandwiches, but that wasn’t the best part of the meal. During the walk over from the courthouse I got a call from McEvoy, who had slipped out of court during the morning session, knowing he could get a transcript of the proceedings if he needed them for the book he planned to write. McEvoy had been slightly sidetracked from the case by the recent bankruptcy of 23andMe, the giant DNA-testing firm that had millions of genetic profiles in its databanks. The unregulated genetic-analytics industry had been Jack’s focus when he worked for the Fair Warning news site. His last book was about how the lack of data security allowed predators inside the wire to use genetic data to identify and choose their victims. Since the bankruptcy, McEvoy had been filing daily Substack dispatches and had been interviewed by local and national media outlets regarding what he knew about the situation and what would now happen to all the genetic data held by the bankrupt tech company.
Jack called me, sounding very excited, and reported that during a deep dive into his past stories and voluminous research, he had come across something that connected to the Tidalwaiv case. It was more than a coincidence, and when he told me what it was, it dramatically changed how I wanted to finish the presentation of my case.
My first decision after that was to drop the Coltons from my lineup of witnesses. Putting them in front of the jury was too risky. It could even be a trap set by the Masons. It was clear from Mitchell’s cross-examination of Brenda Randolph that the Masons’ strategy was to depict Aaron Colton as a troubled teen who had been heading toward violent acts even without cues from an AI companion. They wanted to convince the jury that a jealous and enraged Aaron was the sole reason for Rebecca’s death. That would seem to be the antithesis of every parent’s instinct to protect the reputation of their child, and I couldn’t know what Aaron’s parents had agreed to in their settlement with Tidalwaiv in exchange for three million dollars. Most nondisclosure agreements had built-in non-disparagement clauses as well.
I was also suspicious of the way the Masons had reacted in chambers when I asked the judge to sign the subpoenas for the Coltons. After a minor initial objection and protest, they had backed off meekly. At lunch I reviewed that moment in my mind and found something phony about it. It made me even more convinced that the Masons had made a deal within the deal with the Coltons. From what I had seen of Bruce Colton, I wouldn’t put it past him to throw his own son under the bus for the right price. After all, it was his poor parenting that had led Aaron to seek solace and support from a computer-generated girlfriend.
The bottom line was that I decided to stay away from my former clients. If the Masons wanted the Coltons to testify, they could callthem, and I would be able to treat them as the hostile witnesses they might now be.
“So where is Dr. Debbie?” I asked between dips and bites.
“Checked her in at the InterContinental last night,” Cisco said. “I told her we’d need her either late today or more likely tomorrow.”
“Call her,” I replied, my mouth full. “I’m putting her on after lunch. You’ll have to go pick her up.”
“Wait, what?” Lorna said. “What about the Coltons?”
“Too risky,” I said. “I’ve decided not to call them.”
“The judge is not going to be happy about you subpoenaing witnesses and then not using them,” Lorna said.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The judge won’t know I’m not going to use them till the end. What McEvoy has come up with changes things. The judge will understand that.”
“Okay, so Dr. Debbie is next, then the coder?” Cisco asked.
“No, we go with Spindler after Dr. Debbie,” I said. “I put the coder on last. We go out with him. With a bang. That also gives Jack the rest of the day to nail this new stuff down.”
